When Ronald Reagan signed the Amnesty, E-verify was supposed to have been part of the amnesty.
“I think there’s a lot of blame to go around and spread around for decades. There isn’t one person responsible.” — Mark Krikorian, executive director for Center For Immigration Studies
Instead, he said, the problem lies in how the Immigration Control and Reform Act of 1986 was implemented. He described the passage of the bill as something of a “con-job” that allowed millions of immigrants in the country illegally to have legal status with a promise of workplace enforcement and other measures to curb future illegal immigration.
Making E’Verify mandatory for “ALL” employers would go a long way toward solving the problem of illegal immigration. The problem is that we all want cheap labor.
The program, known as E-Verify, is highly reliable and involves relatively little red tape. If fully utilized, many experts say, it could significantly curb the flow of undocumented immigrants by effectively removing one of the biggest reasons so many come to the United States illegally to begin with — getting a job.
Yet even though E-Verify is free for employers, with more than 98% of those checked being confirmed as work-authorized instantly or within 24 hours, the program is significantly underused.
Nationally the program is voluntary, except for certain businesses such as federal contractors. Most states don’t require employers to use it. In California, only about 16% of employer establishments are enrolled in E-Verify, even lower than the overall national figure of 27.4%, according to a Times analysis of data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nationally the program is voluntary, except for certain businesses such as federal contractors. Most states don’t require employers to use it. In California, only about 16% of employer establishments are enrolled in E-Verify, even lower than the overall national figure of 27.4%, according to a Times analysis of data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Its low use reflects the underlying reality that many businesses — and the broader economy — have come to rely on undocumented immigrants. And in many ways, it’s both symptomatic and an outcome of what both major political parties acknowledge is a “broken immigration system,” in which unauthorized employment has become an intractable condition that employers, consumers and politicians have lived with for years.
Employers face few sanctions for hiring undocumented workers. And the odds of getting inspected are even less than a taxpayer’s likelihood of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Even during the Trump administration, which stepped up enforcement and publicized a few raids, such as the 2018 sweep of 7-Eleven stores in L.A. and other cities, federal agents closed 6,065 cases of unauthorized employment and labor exploitation nationwide in 2019, its peak year, involving fewer than 31,000 undocumented workers, according to data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), with Republican colleagues including Ohio Sen. JD Vance, former President Trump’s running mate, in June introduced a bill to make E-Verify mandatory across the country. But similar efforts in the past have repeatedly failed to win enough bipartisan support.
And one key reason: There are simply not enough “legal” workers to fill all the jobs a healthy, growing U.S. economy generates. And that’s especially so in low-wage industries.
Employers say that requiring E-Verify — without other overhauls to the immigration system, including easier ways to bring in workers — would be devastating.
